


God's Own

by what_alchemy



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Fluff, Internalized Transphobia, Nonbinary Character, Other, Period Typical Attitudes, pregnancy ideation, total wish fulfillment devoid of plot, transfeminine character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 07:03:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21352183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: Francis has a very important question for James.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 33
Kudos: 161
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019), Trans Terror Week





	God's Own

Francis was quite in a lather.

All night he had been brooding and dithering and casting his gaze about the floor. He scowled into his dinner and grunted out monosyllabic answers to each of James’s increasingly desperate conversational volleys.

“My God man, spit it out!” James had finally demanded after pudding. Like runaway thread, James’s mind unspooled all manner of hellish possibilities, each one more dire than the last: the Admiralty had reconsidered Francis’s medical retirement and would be sending him off on the next ship into whichever frozen hell had captured their imaginations this time; Francis had taken up with Sophia at last and would be vacating their apartments post-haste; Francis had grown quite tired of James’s talk and James’s fripperies and James’s body and James’s fancies; Francis had received terrible news from his doctor that would leave James alone within the year.

Francis stood abruptly, the chair screeching along the floor like a discontented owl. James’s heart threatened to burst from its flesh and bone confines, but James stood as well, shoulders squared and spine erect as if before a firing squad. Pride would keep James upright, even through the worst.

A scowl was screwed onto Francis’s face, and he tipped his chin up and puffed his chest out in defiance. 

“James,” he said, and took a single step forward. His Adam’s apple bobbed; he pressed his lips together. He appeared to be forcing himself to meet James’s eyes. 

“I can take it,” James said, though the words felt like a lie on the tongue. “Put me out of my misery, Francis.” Beseeching without begging—at least, that was James’s hope. Hope and achievement were two very different beasts.

“I hope you will consent to be married to me,” Francis blurted in a rush, more loudly than their distance from each other necessitated. James’s frantic heart stumbled and flipped over. James sputtered, uncomprehending, and Francis’s scowl grew deeper, his face purpling. He had his arms behind his back, where James knew his good hand was clasping his stump; this was Francis before the Admiralty, Francis getting court-martialed, Francis refusing to let them see how terrified he was of their judgement. And tonight, James was the gavel. The very baffled gavel.

“I’m sorry,” James said. “I believe I misheard you.” What madness had overcome Francis, to say such things? What madness had overcome _James_, to believe this most secret wish had suddenly been made manifest? Surely, James was mistaken.

Francis sucked in a breath and held it, his gaze hovering to the side of James’s ear. If he tried to get his spine any straighter, he would surely snap in two.

“Don’t _taunt_ me, James, I’m asking you to marry me!” 

James’s heart stopped before a laugh bubbled out, and another, and another until laughter filled the parlor. James surrendered to the joy of it even as Francis’s color turned a violent purple. 

“James! Stop that!”

Oh, he was peevish now; James so liked him peevish. James closed the space between them, laughing and crying all at once, and Francis grunted, locked his arms around James. His breath was James’s breath, his pulse James’s pulse. He stepped back and pushed the long locks of hair away from James’s face, swept it back behind James’s shoulder, cradled James’s face in his hand. His eyes, searching James’s now, were as blue as the Arctic sky. “Be my wife, James,” he said, softly now. “Say yes.”

“Yes, Francis,” James said. “Yes, yes, yes.” What other word could there possibly be?

After their ardor cooled and they lay sated in bed, Francis stroked long lines down James’s back as his elementals leaked from James’s body. James’s contentment filled the room like the purr of a cat, and Francis, for his part, was grinning quite dazedly. James liked the look of it, and resolved to put it on that dear face more often. 

James wanted to resist the torpor that so often overtook the two of them after their satiation. James wanted to speak to Francis here, in the cool of their bedroom, in the perfection of their togetherness, always.

“How will we manage a wedding?” James asked. Francis was silent for a while, tracing the knobs of James’s spine. 

“There was a curious article in _The Daily Telegraph,_” he said. “Did you know there exists a form of self-union called ‘a Quaker marriage’ wherein the couple marries themselves? It struck me as a rather Native practice, but those who marry this way are whites in the United States. The concept is that marriage is the purview of God and needs no clergy to legitimize it.” 

His hand wandered lower, caressing the curve of James’s arse, fingers dipping into the crevice. He passed a fingertip lightly over James’s slack hole, traced the rim. James arched into the contact, whimpering into the pillow. Francis slid a finger inside with ease.

“There now,” Francis said. “Are you sore, James?”

“No,” James said. “Which you _knew_, you dirty old goat.”

Francis’s laugh was silent, a curve of his lips and a puff of his breath. He shifted to press his mouth against James’s shoulder. Another finger joined the first inside James, and gently, firmly stroked the slick, sensitive inner walls. James moaned and clenched around the intrusion.

“And besides,” Francis continued, nonchalant. “I’m a naval captain who’s never performed the marriage rites on anyone before. I am quite put out about it, and I thought, surely the solution is obvious.”

“Oh was it?” James was breathless.

“It was,” Francis said. He pulled his fingers halfway out and glided them back in. James made a sound no one would ever wish to own, but whatever its qualities, it inspired Francis’s breath to grow ragged. “There was only one missing element.”

“And what was that?” James wanted to rise up, arse in air, hands parting cheeks, but resisted the urge. 

“The bride, of course,” Francis said.

James hummed a note of contentment into Francis’s shoulder and pushed back against the penetration. 

“Convenient to have one lying about at your leisure,” James said. Francis shifted to his knees and bent to press his lips between James’s shoulder blades, and trailed kisses down the knobby spine and over the swells of James’s arse. Soon, Francis rose up and slid his thick cock back inside. James sighed and gave over to the sensation of being fucked so soon after spending. There was nothing quite like it: the extension of pleasure, deep and agonizing and torturous, if torture were a fine and ecstatic thing. Francis had the capacity to keep James leaking and oozing beyond the limits of satisfaction, stars bursting behind the eyelids, body at turns taut and languid, wrung dry from so much rapture.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Francis said, a low rumble. “I would never have anyone else.”

James shuddered and keened, clamping down on Francis’s fingers. The bedding had grown damp and soiled beneath their efforts, but the pleasure of it, and the joy of being with Francis this way—Francis allowing James to love him, Francis offering the great well of love within himself to James, Francis delighting in the particulars of James’s body—were too exquisite to abandon for something so trivial as the integrity of the bedclothes.

The specter of Francis leaving, of Francis finding a more suitable lover with a more suitable body, had haunted James since their rescue by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Was the love and comfort they had found in each other a fleeting trick of the ice and cold? Would Francis’s head be turned at the sight of proper ladies, with soft curves and warm bosoms rather than the angles and planes James offered? Would _Sophia’s_ head finally be turned by Francis’s return, by his fame and heroism, by a new title and an improvement in his circumstances? How could James possibly compete?

James was neither a proper lady nor a proper man. James had tried being the best man possible, but no matter the cut of the uniform nor the number of rockets fired true, it still felt as though James were lacking an essential knowledge all the other men possessed without effort. Other men did not seem to have to try so hard simply to be. James was ever the orphan, peering into the windows of manhood from the outside. 

Worse, James liked the trappings of womanhood so well. The softness and beauty, the long hair smooth and curled and set up about the head like a crown. The worship and deference in the eyes of an admiring man upon being granted a dance. The rosy contentment of motherhood, the way their bodies expanded with child, which James had glimpsed for the first time in a niece of Mr. Coningham’s and had since longed for in the most perverse, shamed manner never to be spoken aloud. What must it be like, to feel oneself swell with life, with the undeniable evidence of love? To be the very engine of creation, fueled by desire and connection? More and more since taking up with Francis, James lingered on the impossible thought of growing ponderous with child, Francis’s hand splayed across James’s belly as he spent deep inside, wild in the throes of love. 

In the absence of a bellyful of Francis’s child, James savored the sensation of stockings and garters and laces and silks. James felt a thrill over _corsets_, and even one such as James knew that corsets were a scourge upon womankind. James came unfurled in a dress, blossoming as free and sensuous as an orchid. In a dress, James was whole and languid and soft, someone worthy of being loved. And yet, James could not claim womanhood. 

It was beguiling to imagine a womanly life in which James could indulge the feminine, including the capacity to love Francis freely and openly instead of in furtive shadows and under the guise of flat-sharing until a marriageable woman happened upon either one of them, but James knew that too was out of reach. The aggressive masculinity of James’s body precluded a permanent disguise, and at any rate, the female consciousness defied understanding and proved as mystifying as the male. 

James felt defined most profoundly by a deep envy of both sexes—of the sense of belonging of which others seemed so blithely assured. James thought happiness might be a dress on the body and a Congreve on the arm. Was there such a thing as an orphan of sex? What manner of creature was James, to be thus torn and held together by so much longing? Trousers in the public eye and skirts behind closed doors, an arse and belly aching to be filled—no, James was nothing proper, with no place to go. 

But Francis extended his hand, his regard, his love, anyway.

Francis spent inside James again, gasping against the nape of James’s neck, clutching at James’s hand. 

“Francis, Francis,” James said, wishing for a miracle. Blue eyes, dark hair, compassion and conviction in equal measure.

They would be beautiful, James and Francis’s children.

The fashions of the day called for a white dress, as the Queen wore upon her marriage to her prince consort, and while James had a modest collection of dresses both old and new, none among them were white. Any of the dresses hanging in the wardrobe would have done, but Francis knew James too well. Despite his habitual frugality, he told James to indulge. 

“I wish to see you in the fullness of your beauty,” he said. “You arrange that, and I will take care of the rest.”

James beheld that beauty now in the mirror. The dress was made of the finest French lace. The neckline was more daring than what James saw presently at banquets and balls, but it displayed James’s collarbone fetchingly, and James knew Francis would be enticed by the smattering of hair that peaked out beyond the seam. Three muslin petticoats under the skirt gave James the illusion of fullness about the hips, the stockings delicious and rendering James’s legs smooth and shapely. When the corset was cinched properly, James’s new waist would confer upon James a gossamer delicacy fitting for a day like this.

In the mirror, James saw a study in contradictions—soft and hard, curved and lined, harsh and gentle—all the more compelling for their resistance to definition. A sudden conviction rose up within James’s breast: _you are God’s own perfect creation._

James called out for Francis, and the sight of him arriving in the mirror in full dress uniform and quirked eyebrow sucked the breath from James’s lungs.

“How dare you be so handsome when I need you to pull my corset laces,” James said. 

Francis reached out and hovered his hand over James’s shoulder before setting it lightly down and tracing the sleeve down James’s arm. When he spoke, he sounded gruff.

“James,” he said. “You look…” He shook his head, eyes wide. James’s own eyes fluttered shut, heart quailing. Francis leaned against James’s back, and James’s head rested against Francis’s cheek. Francis pressed his firmness against James’s arse, and James fought the urge to arch into the contact.

“Don’t let’s start,” James murmured. Francis took one step back, the hard knot of his prick falling away from James’s backside. _My husband is impressive,_ James thought, _that I should feel him through all the layers of my skirts._

One-handed though he was, Francis had become practiced at pulling together James’s laces. He made quick work of it, of stealing James’s breath away, of sending all James’s blood rushing southward. 

“Francis,” James gasped, falling forward, hands on the mirror. James was cinched away by ribbon and whale bone, a graceful curve where once there were only strong lines. Francis ground his prick against James’s arse.

“By Christ,” he growled, but he stepped back and buttoned up the dress with haste. “I’ll have you like the brute I am, but first, come into the garden and marry me like you promised.”

“I think I like hearing you ask me to marry you constantly,” James said, breathless. “I hope you won’t stop once we’re united.”

“On my knees, literally and figuratively,” Francis said, and took James’s hand to lead the way to the garden. 

They made their vows in the purpling twilight, amid the spill of hollyhocks and an arrangement of candles. Fireflies flickered in and out about their ankles, their only witnesses.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [Trans Terror Week](https://transterrorweek.tumblr.com), a Tumblr fest for highlighting trans/NB creators in the Terror fandom. I'm also using it to fill the free space on my [Terror Bingo](https://theterrorbingo.tumblr.com) card. Great stuff is coming out for both collections, so definitely give those a gander both here and on Tumblr.
> 
> As ever, I owe my brain-twin, Jouissant, for their careful eye over my fic, their willingness to listen to me fret and screech in equal measure, and their encouragement to write and post this at all. 
> 
> While this is a fluffy wish-fulfillment fic designed more to explore James's headspace than to drive a plot, it still feels pretty raw and intense for me to post. Thanks for reading.


End file.
